


Basic Equation

by MudDog



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Baekhyun thinks he's the shit, Chanyeol thinks he's annoying, M/M, They both pretend they know what they're doing, which they don't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 18:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15540786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MudDog/pseuds/MudDog
Summary: Chanyeol's trying to do his calculus homework. He's not sure what exactly Baekhyun's trying to do, but he obviously wants Chanyeol's attention.





	Basic Equation

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: most of the humanities majors I know are lovely.

“He brought up natural rights then, like he didn’t realize that that was a completely circular argument. I quoted some Edmund Burke at him, but I don’t think he got it because he just kept saying ‘natural rights, natural rights’ over and over again.”

Chanyeol’s trying to do a calculus problem, determining the surface area of some donut-looking shape whose name he can never remember. At least, supposedly that’s what he’s doing. He hasn’t written anything in the past fifteen minutes. He’s not paying that much attention to Baekhyun either, though, because Baekhyun talks too much, and he really _should_ be doing calculus. It’s an odd and very unproductive state of limbo. “But isn’t it true that modern government—or legal, whatever—ethics are based on natural rights?” he asks, not because he cares, but because Baekhyun obviously wants him to say something.

“Yeah, sure, but they didn’t _come from_ natural rights. Do I need to quote Burke at _you_? The question is where did the ethics originate, and they clearly existed long before John Locke wrote anything down. It’s a philosophy class. We were obviously supposed to talk through the origin of morals, and whether or not they’re ultimately arbitrary, but this kid just wouldn’t let go of the natural rights thing, and we spent the whole period on that instead. I wanted to stab myself with my pen.”

Chanyeol shakes his head and rereads exercise thirty-seven for the tenth time. He tries to focus on the words, but Baekhyun’s leg is bouncing in his peripheral vision. When he came down to the first floor of the library twenty minutes ago and spotted Chanyeol, he sat down on top of the table, as if there weren’t three unoccupied chairs.

Chanyeol finds Baekhyun amusingly immature—sitting on the table, trying to prove how smart he is, talking shit about people who aren’t as smart as he is—but some part of him also likes it: the confidence, the big words, even the shit-talking. And, of course, it’s flattering. Chanyeol’s not sure exactly what Baekhyun wants from him, but he obviously wants his attention. He’s all but shouting, “Look at me! Look at me!” and his knee bounces faster every second that Chanyeol resolutely continues to stare at his textbook.

“Did I tell you about my anthropology professor?” Baekhyun asks.

“I don’t think so,” says Chanyeol.

“She gave me a B on my last paper. I don’t care about the grade, but the comments she wrote were crap. She told me I should’ve gone deeper into the causes of— I guess you probably won’t have heard of it. Anyway, she told me to go deeper on this particular issue, but I don’t think she understood what I wrote. She had a summary of my argument in the comments, and it left out some of my main points.”

Chanyeol thinks that, if the professor didn’t understand, it’s probably because Baekyun’s writing wasn’t clear enough, but he hums rather than say so.

Baekhyun’s leg bounces faster. “Are you almost done with that problem? You’ve been working on it forever.”

“Because you keep talking.”

“I thought you liked hearing me talk. I’m educating you. Since you’re one of the tasteless heathens who won’t take humanities, I’m your only window to enlightenment.”

“This is due tomorrow,” says Chanyeol, tapping his pencil on top of exercise thirty-seven. “You can enlighten me some other time.”

Baekhyun squiggles closer until his khaki pants are touching the edge of Chanyeol’s Multivariable Calculus textbook. “Which one are you doing?”

Chanyeol lets his pencil fall against it again. “Thirty-seven.”

“The answer’s five.”

Chanyeol lifts his head. He hopes he looks unamused. Baekhyun, who had his eyes on the textbook before, glances up at him and holds the eye contact.

“If you’d read the problem,” says Chanyeol, staring hard, “and knew anything about math, then you’d know that the answer isn’t going to be a number.”

Baekhyun looks back to the book. “Oh, did you say _thirty_ -seven? I thought it was forty-seven. In that case, it’s two H over three.”

Chanyeol snaps his textbook shut and starts tossing the other supplies that have accumulated around him into his backpack. “I’m going to go do this in my room.”

Baekhyun’s lips thin as they part over his teeth. He’s grinning. “Am I distracting?”

“Yes,” says Chanyeol, but he knows that that’s what Baekhyun wants to hear, so he adds, “the way five-year-old children are distracting.”

When he goes to dump his textbook into his bag, Baekhyun puts a hand down on top of it.

“Case and point,” says Chanyeol, frowning at the book.

Baekhyun doesn’t reply right away. He removes his hand and slips off the table, circling around behind Chanyeol’s chair. Before Chanyeol can ask what he thinks he’s doing, there are hands on his shoulders, and then a voice unexpectedly close to his ear says, “A very attractive five-year-old.”

Chanyeol is too stunned to be either pleased or upset when Baekhyun kisses him. It is more a meeting and greeting of mouths than anything, and, when Baekhyun spins away, heading towards the library doors with a new bounce in his step, it still takes Chanyeol’s heart another beat to restart.

“That wasn’t cool!” he yells after him, once he’s collected himself. “You aren’t cool!”

But all he gets in response is a dirty look from the librarian.

Chanyeol slumps back into his chair and reopens the textbook. He tries to read exercise thirty-seven for the thirteenth time, but the words and equations just jump around his brain and won’t settle down. The name of the donut shape is in the problem, but he’s already forgotten again.

Chanyeol glares in the direction of the library doors, swears that he will never again let Byun Baekhyun within three meters of him, and writes down 2h/3.


End file.
